She knew it was her brother. How? Something just had to ruin the only stable part of her life. She really didn’t care what it was that had happened to him, she just wanted to be there to know that at least he was still alive. At the hospital, they said that he hadn’t felt good at lunch and then something had happened on the playground and his leg was messed up or something. Katherine was in a fog at that time, and didn’t really want to listen to that part of it. She just wanted to see him, but they didn’t get that. She finally did get to see him and with one look at his pale little face, she knew that he wasn’t all right but would be brave for her. She sat with him for a while, but had to go once visiting hours were over. The Mother would be staying the night with him, but her father had that same annoyed look on his face when he took her home that she wanted to jump down his throat and make him listen. The great Katherine didn’t do it though, it was too much to handle just being with her brother that she wouldn’t push it.
* * * * * * * *
The rain didn’t look like it was going to stop and Katherine the great was too tired to keep moving. She made herself comfortable in the log and though once she came out to fix a mini shelter for the mare, she slept most of the time. One of the days a messenger pigeon landed on the log and delivered a message that simply stated, “Stranger is at Homet. Awaits exile.” She thought about her own exile when she first came and once more she looked out of the log, then turned over, sighed, and lay staring up at the bark above her.
* * * * * * *
The next few days Katherine spent working furiously at school so she wouldn’t have any homework when she was with Alex. School wasn’t hard, she was taking a boring English, Trig math, advanced Biology science, Philosophy, Current events, Latin, and P.E./Health for the exercise. Katherine talked to the other students in her classes, but still wasn’t making any friends. Some people had befriended her, but she didn’t feel the closeness and they were all pretty boring to her. That boy on the other hand....
During the rough time with Alex, another person quietly slipped into Katherine’s life. The rumor went that she had been kicked out of her last school because they couldn’t deal with her, but nobody knew if that was true. It certainly looked right enough. Nobody knew if she was smart or if she would gravitate to the flunky people. he immediately attached herself to Katherine, and the going joke was that they should be together anyway, the two brilliant flunkies. Katherine described the girl’s hanging-on as “like a leech” and she started to resent the girl.
She called herself Socratina, a cross between Socrates, Sonatina, and Tina, her real name. Some people thought that it was stupid and would call her Sappy, but since she wouldn’t answer to anything but Socratina, even the teachers gave up on trying to call her anything else. Her main look was dark makeup, black skirts, long black hair that looked very natural but nobody was sure of, and a white dress shirt. She didn’t wear this same outfit every day, but nobody had seen her in jeans and a T-shirt, the main dress of everyone else. No jeans, and no T-shirts.
Socratina didn’t really leech herself to Katherine; from her point of view she had just tried to make friends with her. She had all the same classes and lunch as Katherine, so it just seemed natural to her to be friends. Unlike her look, Socratina was not sullen and depressed, nor depressing. She found most of the people at the school to be this way, but not herself. She also found Katherine to be that way, but she could see that there were human emotions under the tough skin and she was determined to pry her out of her shell. As the weeks went by though, the possibility of that happening got dimmer and dimmer.
Katherine was very unsure at this time. She saw that Socratina was trying to break through her shell, the only shell she had and intended to keep, and that made her nervous and unsure again. Katherine hated to feel unsure about herself, and so she took her anger out on Socratina. She knew that this wasn’t helping her chances at getting a friend, but she couldn’t help it. If she didn’t keep her shell on, then she might fall apart and not be able to get back together again. Nothing could be worse than that, she thought.
The first thing that Katherine noticed about Socratina was the fact that she befriended almost everybody. Not with the passion that she had attached herself to Katherine with, but still a friendly attitude. Everyone liked her if they weren’t dead-set like Katherine. She didn’t let her feelings about someone show, though nobody knew if she ever did find anyone unlikable or not. Rather, she would help anyone of they needed it and she could, and would not show disgust at anyone. This way she was known as Joan of Ark, and the flunkies loved her. This puzzled Katherine because she felt so much better than everyone else and so she acted that way. Socratina wouldn’t show it because it might hurt someone, but she was very intelligent, more so than Katherine herself. Being so blunt as she liked to be, Katherine decided just to ask her why she was that way and have it over with. It couldn’t hurt and it just might help, she thought, as she approached her in their history class. Socratina was bent over another student’s desk helping someone, so Katherine sat down in a desk behind her.
“Why don’t you put yourself above other people?” she asked, slightly sad.
Socratina turned and stared at her. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice serious and slightly accusing.
“I mean,” Katherine said, totally innocently, “I can see that you are really so much better than the rest of them, and yet you lower yourself by hiding the fact that you’re smart. You tell all those people who compliment you that you couldn’t do better, and those who say you can do so much more, you get almost angry at and shake your head. Why?”
“I’m not.” The tone was even more angry.
“What?” Katherine asked, taken aback. The look that Socratina had given her was one of pure hatred.
“I said, I’m not. I’m not better than ‘those people’ as you call them. I may be smarter, but I’m not better. I’m not even smarter. You don’t realize that I’m just not good at school. It’s harder for me than it is for you. There are so many people who can do the same things as I can, and I see no reason why I should raise myself above them, or even try to. There’s always going to be somebody above me. I can do many things, but to be truthful, I am also insecure about it and not ready to accept the fact that maybe I am smart. Have you seen the people around us? Don’t you feel dwarfed at times? But my point is that most of them meet us at our own level and don’t look down on us all the time.”
At this point the bell rang for school to get out, and it broke the spell. People started to leave, and Katherine stood up, thinking that Socratina would want to leave also. Socratina straighten up but didn’t move to her bag.
“What about you?” asked Socratina, her tone unchanged, ”Why did you hide your knowledge all those years? Isn’t that how the story goes? Child genius hates the world?”
“I guess I did it out of spite, like you said, and then habit,” she said, feeling hurt.
“But why now? I see you crouching in your corner, not ready to talk to anyone or admit that you could be anything at all. Don’t answer me now. I’ll talk to you later,” the last two sentences came out simply exhausted. She picked up her bag and coat and walked out, leaving the great Katherine utterly alone and just as confused. It looked as if she had just lost a friend.
To be continued....Go_To_Chapter_5Back_to_Ch.3 Back_To_Main_Page